Archive

5 June 2014 until 27 September 2015

Richard Haizmann

Early drawings and sculptures

“Everything seems to grow out of me in a kind of inner fire” – this was how Richard Haizmann described his feelings when he made the decision to become an artist in 1924. The artist, born in 1895, grew up in a deeply religious family in the Baden region, and went directly from school to the Great War as a volunteer. A friend introduced him to the art dealing trade, and he opened his own gallery, the Graphische Kabinett, in Hamburg in 1922. Vincent van Gogh and Emil Nolde were among those whose works he exhibited right from the outset. After two years, Haizmann gave up his gallery in order to strike out on his own artistic paths. Max Sauerlandt, Director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, warmly praised his first drawings: “Those are beings from an earlier culture, still in direct contact with God. Mysterious, and yet close to us and far off at the same time. I have never seen anything like them before. You must carry on along this path, whatever you do.” The artist began with figures at repose, their attention directed inwards, but he very soon moved on from simplified representation to abstract forms. At the same time that he was producing his drawings he created sculptures in kindred forms, always on a quest to find the inner soul of the form. Haizmann won acclaim and his works were bought by collectors, not least by Max Sauerlandt. The Nazis put an end to his career, and he was classed with the “degenerate” artists. He withdrew to Nordfriesland, where he lived in Niebüll , almost a neighbour of Emil Nolde. It was here that he died in 1963 and here that the works he bequeathed to posterity are kept in a museum dedicated to him. An exhibition in the Haspa-Galerie in the MKG.